Yoshida rechecked the chamber of his tranquilizer gun and the cylinder of his sidearm before settling into a lawn chair sitting just within the open barn doors. He couldn’t see Aura’s rolling eye from here, but he had no doubt it was directed toward him. He watched the steady rise and fall of the blanket that protected her against the burn of the silver chains.
After all the vicious biker had done both as woman and wolf—a body count on par with Everett Geelens himself—she hardly deserved to be pampered.
Then again, she had helped save the lives of his friends Candace and Jill, and that was worth something.
Weighing whether to switch off the overhead lights, Yoshida caught himself rubbing the nagging tingle on his arm again, where her tooth had nicked him. He pushed up the sleeve of his flannel shirt, dreading to see angry redness and watery discharge.
Instead, he found that the wound was nearly healed.
Other than a red mark, which could well have been from his constant rubbing, there was no sign of the bite, no indication his skin had ever been broken.
Chapter 4
Settlement era
The new scarecrow costume was not Everett’s favorite.
Life had been very strange for him lately. He had awakened from a strange dream in which he had burst from a pumpkin, like a baby raven leaving its egg.
Then he played Halloween games with a witch, some motorcycle men, and a pretty girl with shiny black boots. His sister Candace was there! And he was so happy and ready to play with her too, to give her a mask he would make from the nice face of the girl in the boots.
Then a big werewolf came and attacked him! And then Bravo did too! Why? The girl in the boots smashed something over him that made him burn up.
The next thing Everett Geelens knew, he was lying in a field full of corn, naked and cold. He was sad that he hadn’t really gotten to spend time with Candace.
There were colored leaves in this new place, and a cold breeze all around. The scarecrow could only be…a Halloween decoration! He had awakened just in time for his favorite day!
The scarecrow was just standing out in the middle of the cornfield. Not many people would see it way out here, so Everett decided it would be okay to put on its clothes.
The costume fit him just okay. It was itchy and too tight, but it looked like a really real scarecrow, and it was better than being naked.
Everett walked around for a while to try to figure out where he was, though he didn’t know the names of places. He just knew it was time to start celebrating Halloween and to help others celebrate too.
Lo and behold, he found a pumpkin patch! So many big beautiful Halloween squashes wanting him to carve them into jack-o’-lanterns. Everett could almost hear their voices, scratchy and low like his, but not from what evil church men did. Just because they were full of seeds and stuff.
Everett picked up one of the pumpkins and carried it with him, reassuring it he would get it ready for Halloween, as he would do for each and every person he found.
Just as soon as he found a good knife.
He had followed a trail to a little old barn and found a nice sharp hand sickle. He sat down on a stump to carve the first pumpkin jacko ever.
Last night, he finally found somebody—a man in a funny, old-timey pilgrim costume. But it wasn’t spooky enough, so Everett helped him get spookier with the sickle. A scarecrow like him! Everett didn’t know the man’s name was Hezekiah.
Everett ate the pumpkin’s seeds and some of the corn. They tasted weird and sweet. Very different from the meat and potatoes and pumpkin pies his Mamalee used to make for him back when he lived in his little haunted shed, behind the big house where Mamalee and his grumpy old father and his sweet little sister, Candace, and fuzzy dog, Bravo, lived.
Father would never let him out of the shed, except for on Halloween. Then one Halloween not very long ago, Everett realized he was grown up and could decide for himself when he could go out.
Now he walked around the fields and found footpaths but no houses. He saw a column of smoke, so he ventured out of the cornfield to find where it was coming from.
A house! A cute little one, made of skinned trees, like a fairy-tale house. There was no car outside and, even worse, no Halloween decorations. Someone inside was singing, and her voice was nice. But she was singing about the mean old man in the sky that those priests always talked to, the priests who hurt him and made him feel so wrong.
Maybe this lady was nice, though. The best way to find out if someone is nice is to trick-or-treat them.
Everett got his scary sickle ready, trying to hold back his giggle as he crept to the door. There was no ding-dong button. The lady didn’t even have any paper skeletons or toy black cats put out front. Maybe she didn’t know it was Halloween time.
He would have to help her get ready, like he had so many others.
* * * *
The harder Glory worked, the louder she sang praise to the Lord, and Glory Brightwell was surely the loudest-singing woman in the settlement, perhaps in all of the new world. Certainly, her husband, Allard, was the hardest-working man, and he deserved no less. Chopping these carrots for his rabbit stew was the Lord’s work.
Allard was always eager to avail himself for the unexpected needs of their fellow settlers. When he wasn’t leading hunting
